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With recent climatic and environmental changes occurring all across the globe, adaptation has been in the front line of development policies. The Fifth Assessment report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines adaptation as “the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects” (Annex II, 2014a:1758). Although the term has been used mainly in connection with climate change, it also refers to the whole spectrum of human responses to environmental changes that aim to “avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities” (IPCC, 2014a:1758).
Historically, migration has been viewed as a negative adaptation strategy and has not received the adequate attention in recent adaptation and development policy frameworks as a long-term solution. Nevertheless, for households and communities, migration can be a coping strategy that saves lives, diversifies incomes and enhances capacities to deal with environmental and climatic changes. The Fifth Assessment report recognizes that expanding opportunities for mobility can reduce risks of most vulnerable populations, and changes in migration patterns can be responses to both extreme weather events and longer term climate variability; migration being “an effective adaptation strategy […] in all regions of world” (IPCC, 2014b:20).
Building on the research of “migration as adaptation” (inter alia, Tacoli, 2009; McLeman and Hunter, 2010; Bardsley and Hugo, 2010; Bennett et al., 2011), this paper aims to discuss possible adaptation policies, and current climate change and development policy structures on human mobility. It presents available national policy channels for positive adaptation, as well as the ways in which proactively managed migration can be incorporated within these existing frameworks.
The brief is supported by key findings from the six assessment reports of the Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Evidence for Policy (MECLEP) project, funded by the European Union with the financial assistance of IOM’s Development Fund and implemented by IOM in partnership with six universities. The overall aim of this project is to provide evidence for environmental migration and build a case for migration as an adaptation strategy to environmental change. This project sets out to achieve this by conducting empirical research and proposing a policy framework in six pilot countries: Dominican Republic, Haiti, Kenya, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea and Viet Nam (see Map 1).